Which, in Southern California, is right now, Presidents Day. A day that my journalistic brethren and I do not get off because we don’t deserve it.

But what does one do with a day that follows a weekend so out of this world I’m afraid that the weak-minded in Rochester, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and all the other places lately brutalized by snow will say, “Honey, what do you say we load on up the truck and move to Beverly?”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a bunch of snowbirds hanging around my ce-ment pond and soaking up the rays that this past weekend sent me fleeing outdoors.

Know what I did? I pulled weeds in my cactus garden and ripped out an entire swath of thirsty lawn to plant yet more not-thirsty cactus.

This, by the way, is an old affliction. I grew up in a place of 12-foot snow drifts and got transplanted south, where I met a tiny, white-haired woman named Mrs. Clara Monday, a rare native Floridian and a woman so self-sufficient she even made her own soap.

On two acres shaded by palm, citrus, mango and papaya trees she grew most of her own food and, as a sideline, propagated and sold cactus off a folding table she set up on her front lawn.

Some of the cactus I weeded on Saturday are the air-transported descendents of the cactus that she gave me. Thinning the patches of aloe (three varieties), cutting into their thick leaves and releasing their gooey-warm scent into this summery bit of winter, reminded me of the skin cream she made with the stuff.

“Good for what ails,” she’d say in a Southern dialect that always reminded me of key limes. It was light and evocative and out of some place that no longer exists in exactly the same way.

Then, on Sunday, I helped a friend plant Italian cypress, New Zealand flax and a 100 pounds of cactus cuttings from my yard. In what had been a badly neglected garden, they join a thriving organ pipe cactus I brought over last year as a cutting. Three thousand miles and many decades removed from its Florida ancestor, it is known here as Mrs. Monday’s cactus.

A weekend like the one just passed, following as it did some cold and dreary (for us) months, sent me into a triteness-effused reverie where I actually said things like, “Can you believe this weather?” and “What an amazing day!”

Nothing unique in a lack of a words to describe something that can’t be described. But I couldn’t get enough sun and wet dirt to dig in. It’s some kind of throw-back, this impulse to plant and to finally do something that does not involve having my thoughts interrupted by Torrance motorcycle cops pulling up speeders outside my window.

Two full days of outdoor labor and I am reminded of how much hard physical activity we are capable of, of how many rows of trees and how many plants can be successfully transported from nondescript thickets at Home Depot to a backyard where they will certainly outlive me.

It came to mind as I heaped the Italian cypress’ root balls with planting mix that I was actually planting trees for someone else, for some future person who will sit in this backyard and admire the full Renaissance-painting symmetry of things that arrived in one gallon pots.

I also hoped that the perfect weather would not last into a national holiday that rips anybody not engaged in education, government and most every other type of employment (except the self kind) away from lounging dogs, curled cats, sweet-smelling babies, mercifully-tucked-in children, sleeping spouses and significant others for purposes of work.

Only Presidents Day dawned magnificent. And it’s actually true what I used to hear long ago. Long before I moved here, long before millions of other people just like me moved here, what I used to hear was that you can get anywhere on L.A.’s magical freeways (no tolls, no bother) in 20 minutes. I felt like driving to Long Beach just for fun, to San Gabriel for laughs, to the Redondo Beach pier for the waves.

I actually did do that, walking onto the glorious sunlit pier, where I met Hal Strause, a visitor from Ohio, a businessman who miraculously found himself in paradise during a daylong lull in sales calls.

“I already sunburned my arms,” said Strause, who is in clothing labels (seriously). “I’ve been up to my neck in snow for weeks. My wife thinks I’m crazy. I sent her 50 pictures of all this.”

With those words he makes a sweeping gesture with his right hand, adding, “This is perfect.”

“This” being a vast and seamless horizon where the Santa Monica Bay gives way to the Pacific, where waves were at that moment rolling in large like they do every year at this time.

And every year, the waves and days of heaven like this surprise us and remind us why we came here and why we stay here even as a world beckons.

Later, at Malaga Cove, I met a wet-suited couple whom I’ll call Ruth and Dan. They were dripping and sandy and sitting on the cliff side they just came up carrying boards under their arms. They were the very image of California youth. Or that part of the image used by ad agencies to sell a certain glorious vision of youth.

“I’m not going to work on a day like this,” said Dan as Ruth rubbed the back of his neck. “We woke up this morning and said, `Hell with it. We’re surfing.”‘

Ruth, staring at the far horizon added, “Just look at that.”

Again “that.” That being nothing really, just a vast expanse of breathtaking blue/gray emptiness bonding this pretty surf-loving young couple on a beautiful day stolen from winter. One day in a week that is a product of an off-shore flow, nothing more. And so much more that at moments when it can feel like everything.

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